


we break through the shadows and the lies

by ninemoons42



Series: love and blades: a rebelcaptain AU [3]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe - James Bond Fusion, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Canon-Typical Violence, Decoy, Established Relationship, F/M, Impersonation, Inspired By Tumblr, Inspired by Music, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, Tumblr Prompt, Undercover, body double, by which I mean modern era spy story violence, fantasy Iceland, written in the style of Casino Royale 2006
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-30 12:17:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11463435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: Jyn Erso is sent to undertake an unusual assignment in the kingdom of Iceland, at its queen's behest.When things get messy, she finds she's not alone in protecting the queen.





	we break through the shadows and the lies

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know why [this](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/post/162791045301/ninemoons42-ninemoons42-canadianadiva) is the inspiration for this story, but it is what it is.
> 
> Jyn's dress takes inspiration from the different outfits in [this tumblr post](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/post/33296820991/takarazukaforever-elisabeth-at-the-hospital).

There are many mirrors in these halls, and most of the time she can actually turn away from those reflections -- from those multiple images of herself, coming or going as she moves from one room to another. Mirrors set in ornate and elaborate frames: gold leaf and finer and finer sculpting, lines and curves of flowers and vines, none of them alike from mirror to mirror.

What do the mirrors have in common? A coat of arms. Atop a shield flanked by a bull and the figure of a robed man, a hawk to the left and a dragon to the right. Beneath the shield is a crossed pair of swords: the personal emblazoned symbol of this country’s head of state.

Maybe in another place and time, there wouldn’t be any monarchy still in place here, Jyn thinks, idly entertaining the idea of the alternate universe. The thought of living a different life -- maybe something quieter, maybe something more turbulent, maybe nothing at all like this, when she _is_ living a life that couldn’t at all seem similar to her own if she tried.

She’s been listening too much to the ramblings of the other agents in the Partisans, she thinks, and she reluctantly quashes the pang of missing them.

Chin up, she thinks, and shoulders pulled back. The words are not from any of her protocol instructors; the words are her mother’s -- who in one of her own many lives had once danced in rooms full of reflecting surfaces. Eyes keeping a careful watch on every movement, every footfall, every mimed gesture, emotions translated into images created by the body that was moving to the music.

Here, Jyn is not dancing: here, Jyn is standing on a red carpet, alone in the room, waiting, and calm.

In the mirrors is a single image, repeating.

A dress that resembles a riding habit of the pre-war days, with its long sleeves and high neck, its narrowly-cut skirts and the careful array of pleats, and the sparse lace trimming the immaculate white of the protruding collar, turned down with almost military precision, and the wide cuffs. While the dress is supposed to be worn by a person riding sidesaddle, in practice the person whose dress this takes after never does so, instead preferring to ride in an almost soldierly fashion -- which perhaps accounts for the presence beneath the skirts of the close-fitting leather breeches, secured with laces just below the knees and just above the ankles.

Cutting across the heathered gray of the dress’s bodice are several wide bands of black embroidery, some following the seams of the material, and some breaking off to form cursive scrolling decorations. 

In her hand she carries a pair of gloves to match the dress: these gloves are her own, measured precisely to mold to her slender fingers, her knuckles that have sunk down under the years of brawling to save her own life, or to save the lives of her companions. She’s thankful that the gloves are required with this particular outfit, since some of her scars might serve as a means of identification.

Speaking of which, her eyes flick again to the mirrors, warily, and again she has to reassure herself that her makeup conceals the darker line of scar tissue that slashes across her jawline.

Her hair receives little more than a cursory glance: she rolls her shoulders in tiny movements, just enough so she can feel the shifting weight of the heavy hair extensions. Today, these are braided and looped away from her face, away from her neck, so no stray strands might distract her.

She bounces a little on her toes, and the carpet beneath her feet hushes the rustle of her skirts: the boots are a little more utilitarian than this outfit might call for, but that’s because she won’t give up her weapons for anything. And so the breeches beneath the skirt allow for just enough space for discreet holsters, one on each leg: on the left, a holdout pistol, and on the right, a leaf-shaped blade.

At last, the door into the room opens, and Jyn glances at the movement in all the mirrors that she can see in a single glance -- all that she needs for confirmation, before she sweeps her left leg behind her and lowers herself into a curtsy.

Skirts rustling that are not hers, and she straightens up again in a moment, and meets the woman who has appeared in the room, eye to eye precisely: Kristín of Haukadalur, queen regnant of Iceland. “Your Highness.”

“And -- Your Highness,” is the response.

But for the ten-pointed stars pinned into the other woman’s hair -- a dozen bright jewels arranged to form a radiant crown -- the mirrors show that Jyn is dressed nearly exactly as the queen’s twin image.

When Jyn smiles to acknowledge the greeting, she knows she wears Kristín’s own smile, pulled down ever-so-slightly at the right corner.

An outward sign, and the only one allowed to remain so publicly visible, of the illness that, even now, makes the queen’s hands shake. That has pulled the queen’s fingers into the beginnings of gnarled claws: a degenerative disorder of the nerves, that is slowly but inexorably starting to affect the muscles as well.

Tremors in those hands as Kristín turns a little to the side, stiff movements where she once could lead the crowned heads of Europe in elaborate cotillions, and motions a page forward: and the page opens the large box she’s carrying, pure black card except for the coat of arms printed onto the material in gold.

Jyn takes a deep breath, and takes up the proffered items. 

Here is a top hat in crushed velvet, topped off with a spray of midnight-black feathers; and here is a fan to match, black stitches on black lace to create the ghostly images of the four supporters found on the coat of arms.

“May I ask you an impertinent question?” Jyn says, after a moment of turning both hat and fan over and around in her own steady hands.

“You may ask another,” is the reply, unruffled and perhaps even a little amused, if the lines in the corners of the other woman’s eyes are any indication.

“How would I be expected to hold a fan in my hands if I’m busy controlling the horse?”

Jyn feels her own eyes twitch when the page quickly looks down at her feet.

And she feels the flutter of satisfaction deep in her stomach when Kristín covers up her laugh with a barely shaking hand. “You do not need to hold on to the fan, because there will be a place for it attached to the saddle -- a holster, if you will, or perhaps a scabbard.”

“That would make a lot more sense if this fan was a weapon,” Jyn grouses. “If it was edged in steel, and not in lace.”

“Or perhaps you would just have a sword,” Kristín says. “I believe that was the fashion in years gone by.”

“Too bad,” Jyn says, and then she takes a handful of pins from the box.

In a moment, the hat is securely anchored onto her head; in a moment, she is holding the open fan up to shield the lower half of her face.

“You are very much my twin,” the queen murmurs, sadly. “I would not now be able to hold the fan and keep it steady. My recovery is assured, I am told this over and over again -- but it is a recovery that will take time. Time that I do not have at present, not with these elections hanging in the balance. I know that I have told you and your -- your handler -- that I greatly appreciate your rendering us this peculiar service, but still: I must thank you. What you do may very well ensure the survival of -- not the monarchy but the leadership that this country needs.”

Jyn hitches her shoulder up in a shrug. “I can’t agree with everything you do: but then again I don’t have to. I just need to finish this mission, and then -- we can part ways with no hard feelings, and if you wish it, you’ll never have to see me again.”

“That would have been ideal in many of my dealings. Alas.”

The light in the room seems to dim on the queen’s dark hair, on her somber dress -- black where Jyn’s is gray -- on the unsteady steps as Kristín turns away.

“Just one more,” Jyn mutters, the moment she’s left alone in the room full of mirrors. “Just one more.”

*

It isn’t as simple as that.

She gets onto a horse in a stable, and the stablehand knows who she really is, and knows enough that he only has to hold the horse steady while Jyn vaults into the saddle.

The promised pocket for the fan is where the queen said it would be, placed just slightly forward of the pommel.

She rides out to cheers and to a security escort: some of them are mounted and some of them are walking, and all seem to be determined to cover her feet and the parts of her legs where her own weapons are concealed.

She waves to the cheering crowds lining the parade route with ease, though she doesn’t smile, and she’s thankful that she’s not expected to do so.

When she’s expected to dismount and walk the rest of the way to the residence of the man who is currently attempting to hold on to the office of the Prime Minister, she does so without any problems -- even when she breaks away from the escort to dismount, and to accept a nosegay of flowers from a bright-eyed girl in a sober dark green dress. Bearing velvety petals with ragged edges, in such a deep crimson that they’re almost black, the roses soon surround her with their heavy wine-like fragrance --

Somehow she hears the crack of an incoming shot, over the shouting and the repeating layering chant of Kristín’s name, and there’s nothing for it but to call out a strangled warning -- but to lunge for the young girl and bear her protectively to the ground -- 

Hands! Hands snatching at her! And she would growl, she would roll away and put some distance between herself and everyone else who might be approaching: but no. She is appearing as the queen’s decoy and double, and as the queen’s human shield -- and that woman, that queen, would allow her soldiers to carry her away to someplace more defended and defensible. 

But she does retain the presence of mind to take the young girl with her -- the girl with her hands now stained with the crimson of the crushed roses -- away they run, surrounded by the ghostly scent and the determined shouts of the escort, into a series of armored vehicles and then they’re speeding towards the bunkers beneath the royal residences.

Not until the girl is taken into the protective custody of the queen’s bodyguards does Jyn drop her facade: and she’s itching to take action, she’s itching to do something more productive than just standing here in the center of a windowless room while the city over her head breaks up into panicking crowds and frightened running, while the men and women surrounding her glare at every inch of the featureless reinforced walls.

The door opens, and someone runs in with a satellite phone, and says, “Agent Stardust!”

Jyn leaps forward and takes the phone, and presses the button for speaker. “Control,” she snaps. “I’m alive and well. Please confirm the queen is all right.”

“That’s good to hear,” and the voice of Leia Organa is distorted with the distance between them, with the interference caused by the shielding in the bunker’s walls, but she’s easy to understand nonetheless. “And I have visual confirmation that Kristín is safe and sound in her own location. You couldn’t tell me how you knew?”

“Instinct,” is all Jyn can say over the mad jackrabbiting beat of her heart.

“I would have called it paranoia on any other day: but right now I only have a moment to be grateful for you and for it.”

“You’re working on leads already,” Jyn says.

“Roger that. The hive’s already springing into action. Can everyone in the room hear me?”

Jyn looks up, and meets several sets of steel-hard eyes. “You heard the woman.”

A chorus of affirmatives.

“Every one of you, verify now: the code is Hunter Six Blue. I need to hear your responses.”

Jyn gets a front-row seat to the terrible understanding that dawns in the faces of the members of the escort: they are all being ordered to confirm that they are loyal to the queen and to her chosen line of succession.

“Cody four-two,” the woman who had ridden at Jyn’s right side says, and the others soon follow suit, and Jyn can’t see Leia now, but she knows that Leia is listening very intently.

The responses stream in, and Jyn catches herself glancing at each man and each woman as he or she raps out a confirmation phrase, and finally there’s one person left in the bunker who hasn’t given any form of response.

Leia asks, “I count twenty, and that’s the usual number of people escorting the queen. Agent Stardust, is that everyone?”

“No,” Jyn says, and -- 

“No,” says a male voice.

A familiar male voice.

The hairs rise on the back of Jyn’s neck.

And she doesn’t question the instinct that makes her reach for her gun -- she draws the small pistol from her leg, gathers her skirts, and bounds across the room -- to bring the muzzle up between the steady eyes of none other than Cassian Andor.

“Leia,” Jyn says. Her tone comes out with far too much acid in it. “I need you to put in a call to M.”

“Someone from the Alliance is there,” is the reply, only a little surprised. “Someone you know.”

“Yes, it seems so,” Jyn says.

And she stares down the seeming calm in Cassian’s eyes, a calm that doesn’t even ripple when she spits out a question: “How do I know it’s really you?”

“Summer, coffee cookie-dough, triple berry -- I overpaid, and left a tip. You pointed out I’d used the wrong coins.”

Nary a shiver in his voice as far as she can tell.

And she can remember, vividly, the battered leather of the jacket he’d been wearing on that first visit; she can remember the smell of his cologne; she can remember that he’d burned himself making breakfast.

“Andor. Of course it’s him. Has he been there all along?” Leia asks, suddenly.

She’s intent on his face, on the movement of his mouth when he responds: “Been here a week. But I was shadowing -- the real, the queen, the actual one. Not you.”

“Why?”

She hears Leia mutter, “Good question.”

“M,” is the brief answer. “She was hoping that I would not have to do anything -- but that it was better for me to be here and to be not-needed, than for me to be absent when I needed to be here.”

She watches him take a deep breath before continuing: “I only knew that she had asked for a decoy to be brought in; I didn’t know it would be you.”

“Jyn,” Leia says.

And Jyn only replies: “I will handle this.”

“I’ll expect a full report after the elections.”

“You’ll get it as soon as I’m freed,” she promises.

Someone bursts into the room, then, with a message bearing the royal cipher, and then Jyn’s got to think about chasing down the fool who tried to shoot at her, who thought he was shooting at the queen of Iceland, and she very carefully doesn’t think too much about the fact that Cassian is at her heels, is watching her back.

She doesn’t think about the fact that she’s already watching his, even before she even realizes that she’s doing it.

*

The pillow next to her vibrates and she opens her eyes to see -- not Cassian, or at least not just him. He’s sitting up and he seems to be immersed in his tablet, seems to be reading something, but he’s also pushing her phone in her direction, and she’s sluggish from trying to catch up on her sleep, hoarse from the last few nights of desperate tracking after the elections and after the proclamation of the new Prime Minister, and she croaks when she puts the phone to her ear: “H’lo.”

“Mail call,” Leia says on the other end. “You didn’t leave your forwarding address?”

“I didn’t update the instructions. For a reason.”

“Fair enough. But you’ve got a package from Iceland. Looks like skyr. You like that stuff now?”

“Leia, I’m hanging up.”

“At least let me read the letter to you.”

Jyn sighs. “Please make it quick. I want to go back to sleep.”

The sounds of throat-clearing, and then: “To Miss Erso: I wish to extend my very personal thanks for all that you have done for me, personally, and for me, as the representative of my country on the international stage. It is a shame that I cannot bestow any honors upon you, nor upon the equally courageous and resourceful Commander with whom you worked. Were it possible to give what gratitude is due to you without the necessary procedures and publicity, I would do it this very instant. Let this letter suffice instead. Thank you so much for what you have done -- and you are welcome to come back to your quarters in the palace at any time you so choose. Signed, Kristín of Iceland, House Haukadalur, and other titles.”

“Anything else?” Jyn asks. “Eat the skyr.”

“Thanks, I will. Go back to sleep. I’ll see you in a few weeks.”

“Let me guess,” Cassian mutters as he places his tablet somewhere, as he stretches and sinks back down onto the pillows. “The thing about eating breakfast.”

“I can’t do anything if I don’t have any energy -- that’s true for any human being,” Jyn mutters as she tries to beat her own pillows into a more supportive shape. “Even you. Even Leia. Even -- ” She waves her hand, dismissive.

“Hence the skyr. And -- porridge?”

“Bread with butter and sugar.” 

And as if on cue, her stomach rumbles.

She catches Cassian’s eye, and frowns severely at him.

“I didn’t say anything,” he says.

“You were thinking of laughing,” she says, pinching his hip, but gently.

“I was trying to figure out how we could get churros without having to get up.”

She has to point out the obvious. “Madrid is a couple of hours that way.”

“So let’s get there now. We can get a room. The train won’t be crowded.” His hand drifts to her shoulder, and she can’t help but whisper a kiss across his knuckles.

“You’d better make it worth my while, I’m still mad at you.” She pouts at him.

Her reward is a quiet chuckle and a kiss that sears her to her very bones. “I promise to make it up to you. With churros. And -- other things. Only one request, though,” and she sits up when he does.

“Yes?”

“Could you maybe wear that outfit again? The gray one? It looked fantastic on you.”

Jyn groans, and belts him with her pillows, and very carefully does not look in the direction of the extra bag that she’s still carrying, all the way from Iceland.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "Survival" at [@therebelcaptainnetwork](http://therebelcaptainnetwork.tumblr.com).
> 
> Look me up on tumblr at [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com)!


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